This week we met Nancy de Losa and Audrey Gerber from Austem. Austem is a company that has been set up to show the world the very many beautiful flowers that are Australian natives. Their activities include developing further the types of Australian natives through research, encouraging production and marketing of these natives in Australia and overseas.

We visited Longford Farm where farmer Denis Tricks has been growing Australian native flowers for almost twenty years.

Denis’s 80-acre farm is located at Longford in the Gippsland area of Victoria. Denis grows about 100 different flower varieties at Longford.

For more information about Longford farm go to www.rirdc.gov.au/champions/LongfordFlowers.html

The good thing about farming Australian natives is:

- They use very little water

- They grow on a bush which means they do not need to be replanted again and again which keeps the soil healthy.

- They are grown locally so do not require many transport miles which add to greenhouse gases

- They are naturally resistant to pests

Australian natives vary in colour, shape, texture and smell - some of them are hard, some are soft and some are spiky and they are quite unusual. We have listed a few below.

Dryandra
Is part of the protea family and has 135 species in its family. They are small trees or shrubs that are evergreen. The leaves are interesting they are quite spiky and look as if someone has cut them with zing sag scissors.

The young leaves are soft and they become harder to protect themselves from insects.

Dryandra quercifolia is one of the most attractive species in the genus. It is a spreading shrub to about 2 metres high by a similar width. The leaves are stiff and spiky with toothed margins.

The new growth is a bronze colour and adds to the attraction of the plant. The bright yellow flower clusters may be up to 80mm in diameter and occur at the ends of the branches in spring.

It’s got brown fonds that come up covering the yellow centre and it’s got the most delightful lace covering the brown.

Banksia Cocksinnia.
The common name is Scarlet Banksia which is very appropriate for this species. It has beautiful red spikes and it grows on big bushes. If you look at it closely you will see the fine threads of red around the soft bulbs of the head. It is a favourite cut flower and is one of Australia’s most commonly seen flowers.

Verticordia Grandis or feather flower.
It is quite spectacular. It is a small to medium shrub, usually about 1 metre in height but which may reach 2 metres. It has small, stem-clasping, rounded leaves which are grey-green in colour. The 5-petalled flowers are quite large and are deep scarlet in colour. Flowers are generally seen in spring and early summer.

If you go up close and touch it, it’s soft, soft just like feathers.

Banksia is an iconic Australian wildflower and popular garden plants, they are easily recognised by their characteristic flower spikes and fruiting “cones” and can vary from woody shrubs to trees up to 30 metres tall. They are generally found in a wide variety of landscapes; forest, shrubland, and some more arid landscapes, though not in Australia’s deserts.

Heavy producers of nectar, banksias form a vital part of the food chain in the Australian bush. They are an important food source for all sorts of animals, including birds, bats, rats, possums and a host of invertebrates. Furthermore, they are of economic importance to Australia’s nursery and cut flower industries. However these plants are threatened by a number of processes including land clearing, frequent burning and disease, and a number of species are rare and endangered.

The leaves of Banksia vary greatly between species. Sizes vary from narrow, 1-1½ centimetre long leaves to very large leaves which may be up to 45 centimetres long. The leaves of most species have serrated edges.

Banksias are most easily recognised by their characteristic flower spike. A single flower spike generally contains hundreds, if not thousands of flowers. The most recorded is around 6000 individual flowers on inflorescences of B. grandis.

Banksia flowers are usually a shade of yellow, but orange, red and pink flowers also occur. We saw some pink ones.

Not all Australian flowers are big and bold; some of them are soft and delicate.

The flannel flower is one of the soft delicate flowers.

It is a short-lived perennial, living up to four years in its natural environment. It grows in full sun or semi-shade. They flower between late September and early December.

It is an erect sub shrub, up to a metre tall, with rather brittle stems and soft silver-grey leaves having a dense covering of pale woolly hairs. The daisy-like or star-shaped flowers are up to 8 centimetres across with an outer ring of long cream petals (bracts) which are flannel-like in texture.

As well as the flower being soft to touch, the leaves are also soft and silvery with tiny hairs on them.

We hope next time you go to the nursery you will consider buying Australian flowers and plants.

For more information about Australian native flowers go to www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/flora/